The world is changing faster than we can keep up with it.
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HacDC: Privacy, anonymity, and operational security.
On Saturday, 8 October 2011 I will be at HacDC giving an impromptu class on personal privacy, online anonymity, and operational security for activists. I will be talking about some of the online surveillance technologies in use right now, risks inherent in organizing online and how to mitigate them, practical cryptography, practical anonymity, and operational security. If you are not familiar with using PGP or GnuPG and would like to generate and distribute a key or learn how to send and receive encrypted and signed e-mail, I can walk you through the process during the class. I will probably be …
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Down to the wire: Byzantium Development Sprint (September Edition)
Friday evening the Byzantium development team met once again at HacDC to determine where all of us are in the engineering and development process and figure out what we have to do before we can put the alpha release online and announce open testing. Ben the Pyrate has been hard at work setting up the infrastructure and is constructing an automated build environment for the Porteus project (whose distro we're basing Byzantium on), and which we can leverage to make it easier to compile Byzantium Linux into a bootable .iso image. Right now the installation process is entirely manual, which …
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I didn't forget, Bunny.
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We're almost done unpacking.
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Interviewed by College v2.0!
A couple of weeks back Project Byzantium was contacted by Jeffrey Young, a journalist with the Chronicle of Higher Education working the online beat. He'd heard about the project and wanted to interview the developers; after some discussion on the mailing list he and I set up a time and spoke on the phone for an hour or so. A couple of days ago the article went live on their website, and I must say that I'm very pleased with how well it turned out. All I can speak to are my bits, but the location aside (we meet at …
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Dealing with the Maryland DMV.
Possibly the second worst thing about pulling up roots and moving someplace new is all the paperwork: You can only accomplish so much until you brave the outermost ring of Hell and return with proof of your valor. To put it another way, until the Department of Motor Vehicles deigns to give you a new driver's license, implicitly stating that you've been accepted by the state as being a full resident you'll probably be stuck. This usually involves a two step process, the first being the acquisition of a title, or legal proof that you are the lawful owner of …
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Subconjunctival hemorrhage.
As I've said a few times, all the nights I spent at the gym prior to moving into our new house really paid off. While I'm nowhere near as strong as the movers were I can still pick stuff up and put it down again without a whole lot of trouble. At least, until Lyssa pointed this out to me:
The left-hand image was taken an hour after Lyssa noticed; the right-hand image was taken a week later.
It seems that, while cleaning up the basement last friday I managed to give myself a subconjunctival haemorrhage. To put it another …
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Neil Gaiman at the National Press Club.
Back in June of 2011 Neil Gaiman went on a hastily assembled book signing tour to promote the release of the tenth anniversary edition of American Gods, one of his most famous novels. Neil's book signings (just ask anyone who's met him, you always find yourself calling him 'Neil' forever afterward) are always a good time, though this on was held at the National Press Club so it was a little more understated than most. After being introduced Neil talked a little about the circumstances surrounding the book's publication, namely, that it had originally been a great deal longer but …
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Freedom of expression?
The faces of these people look like they got stuck.
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